“Software pirates are likely to create botnets, which are armies of compromised computers controlled by cyber-criminals and used to perform a host of illegal Internet activities,” Markus Schweitzer, spokesman for German company Media Surveillance, said in a Microsoft news release.

OK, so we’re not to the point of Skynet  yet. But Microsoft said it has seen, during the past two years, a “surge” in voluntary reports of people who unknowingly purchased counterfeited software. The company is involved with more than 300 anti-piracy cases around the world.

With its latest version of Windows, Microsoft has improved the activation and product-validation processes. Windows 7 includes systems, first introduced in Windows Vista, that can detect when a person attempts to circumvent activation.

But pirates are smart, and that doesn’t always work  Microsoft would probably be the first to tell you that. Even before the Oct. 22 release of Windows 7, pirated copies of the new operating system were selling in China. Now counterfeiters are selling it on USB thumb drives.

There’s no arguing that piracy is a serious concern for software companies. Microsoft said 41 percent of all software installed on personal computers is illegally obtained, costing the industry $53 billion so far.

So the world’s biggest software company kicked off its “enforcement actions” against cyber-outlaws on Thursday. Microsoft spends “tens of millions of dollars every year” on anti-piracy education, enforcement and engineering, David Finn, associate general counsel for worldwide anti-piracy and anti-counterfeiting at Microsoft, told seattlepi.com in an e-mail.

In true Microsoft fashion, its “enforcement actions” actually are investment actions. The company is investing in nine Product Identification Analysis Labs around the world.

These labs use digital disc fingerprinting, optical manufacturing tracking and other methods to help police in their “pursuit of criminal software counterfeiting syndicates,” Microsoft said. These days, piracy is so widespread partly because of organized software-piracy groups.

Microsoft also is assisting government agencies and law enforcement in more than 300 civil cases, the company said.

Finally, as part of its first Consumer Action Day, Microsoft is launching “education initiatives” in 70 countries to tell people about the risks of pirated software. Some of the programs are actual classes that are part of a school’s curriculum, Finn said.

Media Surveillance, the German company, downloaded several hundred pirated and hacked copies of Windows, and found that 32 percent contained malicious code. And a Harrison Group study found that companies using unauthorized software are 73 percent more likely to lose data and experience critical computer errors.

“Consumers who are duped by fraudulent software encounter viruses, lose personal information, risk having their identities stolen, and waste valuable time and money,” Finn said in Microsoft’s news release. “Today’s announcement demonstrates our commitment to working with others, including our partners, government agencies and nongovernmental organizations, to protect people from the ill effects of counterfeit software.”

Highlights include an intellectual property rights education program in schools across China, an originals club for software resellers in Germany, a risk-of-counterfeit training course for the consumer protection authority in Mexico, a children’s online safety program in Greece, and a study of piracy’s impact on small and midsize businesses in Argentina. An interactive map detailing these efforts around the world today can be found at http://www.howtotell.com.

That map is hard to find because it’s not actually at howtotell.com, so here you go. The red markers represent reported piracy cases; the blue markers represent Microsoft’s enforcement and education initiatives.

Download a summary of the anti-piracy civil cases with which Microsoft is involved (DOC).